The Conservatives would pass a law to guarantee no increases to income tax, National Insurance or VAT over the next parliament if they form the next government, David Cameron has said.
The next government must reform council tax in England to end the ‘absurd situation’ of basing it on relative values in 1991, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said.
In a triple whammy, the government has cut town hall funding while creating additional costs and extra work for local authorities assisting people facing destitution.
There are signs that inequality in the UK is beginning to rise again following tax and benefit changes introduced since 2010, an economic analysis has found.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has set out plans to cap annual increases in working age benefits at 1% as part of plans to close the deficit by the end of 2017/18.
A quarter of a million low-income households in England will pay more in council tax from this month following cuts in the support schemes run by town halls, a report has concluded.
International evidence has shown that devolution of welfare-to-work schemes to local authorities can improve services – if funding and accountability challenges can be overcome.
There has been very little frontline progress on the delivery of the government’s Universal Credit benefit reform, despite £700m having been spent on it, the Public Accounts Committee said today.
David Cameron has said a future Conservative government would consider cutting benefits for people with conditions such as drug and alcohol addiction or obesity if they do not agree to treatment.
The government’s Universal Credit benefit system is being rolled out across the UK from today, marking the start of what work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith is calling a ‘cultural change’...
Government and councils have been urged to consider how expansion of payment-by-results systems to pay for public services can work for vulnerable people with multiple needs.
Government cuts to benefits mean total welfare spending will be £16.7bn lower by the end of the parliament than it would have been without the changes, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found.
Low-income families with children and the very well off are the two groups that have lost the most from the coalition government’s changes to tax and benefits for working-age people, the Institute...
The UK’s unemployment rate has fallen below 6% for the first time in six years, according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics today.
Over 8 million UK families with children – more than one third – now have less than they require for a socially acceptable standard of living, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Whitehall incentives for local authorities to tackle Housing Benefit fraud and error are weak and being compounded by cuts in funding available to councils to administer it, the Public Accounts...
More than a million unemployed people are receiving no government support to get back into work as they fall between cracks of different national schemes, an analysis for the Local Government...
Councils in England will face an average cut in spending power of 1.8% in 2015/16, local government minister Kris Hopkins has announced, but London boroughs and urban authorities will face larger...
Cities should be given greater financial incentives to tackle poverty by being allowed to retain more of the savings made from cutting unemployment, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has said.
Auditors today said they are not yet able to judge if the government’s flagship Universal Credit reform to the welfare system will achieve value for money.